Author: Spiker

Could you imagine a country where a judge says it was OK for the cops to kill your dogs because they didn’t have license? Source: Reason By: C.J. Ciaramella A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a Michigan woman has no basis to sue the Detroit Police Department (DPD) for shooting her three dogs because they were not properly licensed. U.S. District Court Judge George Caram Steeh dismissed a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Detroit resident Nikita Smith last last year after a marijuana raid by Detroit police left her three dogs shot to death. The ruling is the first time a federal court has considered the question of whether an unlicensed pet—in violation of city or state code—is protected property under the Fourth Amendment. Federal courts have established that pets are protected from unreasonable seizures (read: killing) by police, but the city of Detroit argued in a motion in March that Smith’s dogs, because they were unlicensed, were “contraband” for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment, meaning she had no legitimate property interest in them and therefore no basis to sue the officers or department. In his Wednesday opinion Steeh agreed. “The Court is aware that this conclusion may not sit well with dog owners and animal lovers in general,” the judge wrote. “The reason for any unease stems from the fact that while pet owners consider their pets to be...

Did you know that police are taking your DNA and storing it? Source: ProPublica By: Lauren Kirchner The five teenage boys were sitting in a parked car in a gated community in Melbourne, Florida, when a police officer pulled up behind them. Officer Justin Valutsky closed one of the rear doors, which had been ajar, and told them to stay in the car. He peered into the drivers’ side window of the white Hyundai SUV and asked what the teens were doing there. It was a Saturday night in March 2015 and they told Valutsky they were visiting a friend for a sleepover. Valutsky told them there had been a string of car break-ins recently in the area. Then, after questioning them some more, he made an unexpected demand: He asked which one of them wanted to give him a DNA sample. After a long pause, Adam, a slight 15-year-old with curly hair and braces, said, “Okay, I guess I’ll do it.” Valutsky showed Adam how to rub a long cotton swab around the inside of his cheek, then gave him a consent form to sign and took his thumbprint. He sealed Adam’s swab in an envelope. Then he let the boys go. Telling the story later, Adam would say of the officer’s request, “I thought it meant we had to.” Over the last decade, collecting DNA from people...

The tides are turning, two lawmakers in New Hampshire change to the Libertarian Party Source: Reason By: Brian Doherty Since the 2016 election, the Libertarian Party (L.P.) has gained two sitting state legislators in New Hampshire. Not by having L.P. candidates win in that election, but by having two legislators who won as a Republican and a Democrat switch allegiance to the L.P. The first was former Republican Caleb Dyer (Hillsborough 37, the cities of Hudson and Pelham) in February. This month, a new two-person Libertarian Caucus in the New Hampshire House of Representatives was formed when Democrat Joseph Stallcop (from Cheshire House District 4, representing the city of Keene’s Ward 1) also went L.P. Both renegades are 21 years old. Dyer found the Republican House leadership basically trying to scuttle nearly every bill he sponsored or co-sponsored, and began to suspect it wasn’t the Party for him. (The bills included one mandating police body cameras and one allowing for easier annulment of arrest records when no conviction followed.) He was told more or less that anything that wasn’t a pre-set part of the state Party’s platform, he’d be obstructed on. This didn’t sit well with Dyer. (The Republicans currently have a strong majority in the House.) In a February Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session, Dyer explained that when he runs for re-election as a Libertarian, he has the chance of appealing to normally Democratic voters: “I am a...

Cops are trying to get into your phones to get evidence Source: Project Censored By: Unknown On January 20, 2017, as Donald Trump was being sworn in as President of The United States protests were taking place a short distance away. Washington, D.C. Police arrested over 200 individuals and charged them under felony riot laws and took phones away as evidence. AlterNet’s Sarah Lazare, along with other news outlets cited in the article, have reported that law enforcement is compelling Facebook, Google, and Apple to turn over data for at least some of the people arrested. An E-mail from Facebook’s “Law Enforcement Response Team” to a user explained that they had ten days to produce court documents that would legally prevent Facebook from honoring the government’s request for information about their account. Mark Goldstone, a lawyer representing several of the defendants, was quoted as saying both Apple and Facebook had been contacted and asked to turn over customer’s personal information. One individual arrested and charged with rioting showed AlterNet a communication from Apple alerting him they had received a similar request from legal authorities requesting data. This man told reporters his phone was NOT present when he was arrested. Gladstone said, “It’s an outrageous overreach by the government to try to data-mine personal property that wasn’t seized at the demonstration.” Another person arrested, a journalist swept up in the mass arrest who...

Drinking water for 15 Million Americans in 27 states are contaminated and we aren’t really talking about it! Source: Time By: Emily Weyrauch Drinking water for 15 million Americans in 27 states is contaminated with a toxic chemical that was used to make nonstick cookware, according to a new report released Thursday. These chemicals, known as PFCs (perfluorochemicals), have been linked to cancer, thyroid disease and weakened immune systems. Even small concentrations in drinking water is considered a threat to public health, according to the report by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group and Northeastern University. “It’s remarkable that the richest country on Earth can’t guarantee its citizens that their drinking water is completely safe and has no long-term health implications,” said Bill Walker, managing editor of the EWG in a press release. Because PFCs have waterproof and nonstick properties, they were formerly used in hundreds of consumer products, “including cookware, outdoor clothing, food packaging and firefighting foam,” reports the EWG. The EWG and Northeastern University created an interactive map combining data from the EPA and information from all publicly documented cases of PFC pollution coming from manufacturing plants, military airbases, civilian airports and fire training sites. Although there is growing evidence of the health hazards of PFCs, there are currently no federal health regulations for these chemicals in drinking water. It has been 25 years since the EPA has added a new drinking water contaminant to the Safe Drinking Water...